OUR LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD
Apartments #204 (mine) and #202 (Myrtle’s) were nestled in the corner of the building, such that we were the only people in the immediate vicinity. Mary Sue lived the closest to us, right around the corner in #205, and then there was Frederick, the only black guy on the hall, Mickey and Marion, Alice, Grace, and Crazy Mabel. These were the people all within yelling distance of me, in case I was ever in an emergency and they had their hearing aids in. Myrtle and I called our apartments “our little corner of the world.” Even though she was skeptical of me at first, she quickly got attached to me because I came to see her just about every day. She had a candy jar just like my grandmother did so that was even more incentive to go over there. After a few weeks I noticed that Myrtle didn’t have all her marbles. Not that I was one to talk, because God knows there were more days than not when I was loopy on medicine and probably couldn’t have pronounced my own name correctly. But Myrtle’s trouble was different. Some days she would be perfectly normal. Other days she would call me her daughter to someone on the phone. Other days she would call me her granddaughter. One time I even heard her tell a caller, “I gotta go, some lady’s here to see me.” I always played along. Even when she thought I was “some lady,” she was always very nice to me and offered me goodies. Usually I would visit in the afternoon before dinner, when I knew she would be watching Oprah and I could watch it with her (unless the topic was something racy, in which case I would go down to the community TV near the laundry room because no one ever watched that one… my crappy TV couldn’t pick up Oprah). If I came at any other time of the day she would be watching the religious station and I simply could not tolerate that, even for candy.
One fine March afternoon I was at Myrtle’s. Someone had made her a sweet potato pie (she couldn’t remember who) and she happily shared it with me. “Did you make me this pie?”
“No ma’am.”
“Well I don’t know who did. But it sure is good. Have some more, won’t you.”
“If you insist,” I said.
“How old did you say you were?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Oh, you’re just a little girl. You know, if you stay here long enough, you’d probably hold the record as the longest resident at Skylyn Place. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? If you get to be my age, you’d a-been living here… let’s see… I ain’t so good at math.”
“Me neither.”
“But about sixty years, I reckon. Sixty years from now you’d be telling your old lady friends, ‘Yeah, I been livin’ here since twenty aught six,’ and you can tell them about me and Mary Sue and what it was like back in the old days.” Myrtle laughed and laughed. I did too. “This is the best pie. Thank you so much for making this.” I smiled and said she was welcome, and didn’t correct her.
Living here sixty years. Was that a pleasing thought? Did I want to be like the old man in The Green Mile who’d outlived everyone he ever knew and told stories about all the old days to the next crop of old people? Or would I actually outlive anyone here?
After Myrtle and I had a hearty laugh, she reached across the couch and touched my hand. “I just hope if you’re living here that long, it’s because you want to, and not because you have to.” “Amen, sister,” I said, reaching into her candy jar.
* * *
May 22, 2006 Monday
One nifty feature of living in a retirement home is that we have cute little buttons all over the place called “panic buttons.” They’re ingenious. If the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up lady” had had one, she would never have needed those stupid commercials and would’ve remained a dignified old lady without having become the butt of jokes and an icon of the Generation X crowd.
This afternoon I was in the bathroom when the button madness began. One thing my friends know about me is that buttons and I have issues. I am what is known as Button-challenged. I accidentally pushed it while reaching for a fresh roll of toilet paper. I’d never pressed it before so I wasn’t sure if anything had happened.
A few minutes later, though, the repercussions of my button disability became evident. The nurse on duty, Shawn, came barreling through my door. “Susan? Everything okay in here?” She rounded the corner to the bathroom, where I was happily on the toilet.
“I’m fine.”
She sighed, exasperated. “What’s the emergency? Why’d you press the button?”
“It was an accident. But since you’re here, will you get me a Diet Dr. Pepper?”
She stomped to my kitchen and slammed my refrigerator door. I heard her grumbling, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
She brought me my Diet Dr. Pepper and I thanked her. “Anything else, madam?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” she said, walking off. “And I’m having that button disabled tomorrow.”
She kicked some of my clothes out of the way, mumbling about how messy my apartment was, and then came back to the bathroom. “By the way,” she said, “your plants look beautiful.”
“I know,” I said. “They are residents of #204. They are survivors.”
And then I let out the biggest burp known to man, loud enough even for Myrtle next door to hear, and Shawn said I was totally disgusting.
Sure is good to be myself again.